


innocence died screaming (honey, ask me I should know)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: The Kids Are Alright [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Curses, Dark, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Isle of the Lost (Disney), Murder, Pre-Canon, Prologue, Slavery, United States of Auradon (Disney) Is Not Perfect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 04:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13696743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: You can't blame the Lost kids for what they had to do.Oh, you say,those poor, defenseless children.You put them there, left them with the worst criminals and abusers in the world. Would you expect anything else to happen?Good? Oh, Merlin, no. No, Good is not a concept in a world where the most powerful people once slaughtered entire armies. No, power is what is understood on this Isle.Good is reserved for people who can imagine a world past tomorrow.





	innocence died screaming (honey, ask me I should know)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "From Eden" by Hozier.

You can't blame the Lost kids for what they had to do.

You can't blame Málaga Flores, the daughter of Maleficent, for scrounging up spells of the darkest sort. You can't blame her for the bodies left behind, for doing whatever was needed to protect her gang from those who threatened them.

(Some of them lashed out, some of them collapsed inward. Some of them vowed that they'd never let themself be betrayed, some of them ended up cursed.

Some of them swore vengeance.)

You can't blame Evie Ulrich, daughter of the Evil Queen, for using her body and her voice as weapons. You can't blame her for seeking whatever necessary to marry the most powerful person in the land. She learned love from a mother who poisoned her stepdaughter because she was prettier than she was. 

(You should be terrified of those that were rejected, those that learned how to create power out of anything. Even if they become good, they have learned how to use _anything_  to accomplish their goals.

Even if they are Good, if their goals align with yours, they do not hold the same methods in mind that you do.)

You can't blame Jazi El-Amin, son of Jafar, for bruises. He is the gang's Hitter, their arm of intimidation. He is what keeps other gangs from encroaching on their territory, from attacking them and hurting them. Jay is skilled in theft and martial arts, in street fighting and guerilla warfare. He has blood on his hands, names to his kill list, but this is how he and his gang have stayed alive so he feels no remorse.

(Good? Oh, Merlin, no. No, Good is not a concept in a world where the most powerful people once slaughtered entire armies. No, power is what is understood on this Isle.

 _Good_ is reserved for people who can imagine a world past tomorrow.)

You can't blame Carlos de Vil, son of Cruella de Vil, the slave of his mother. You can't blame him for folding in on himself, sacrificing his happiness for his family's, doing anything and everything he can not to let down those he loves. He drugs a boy with a love potion, steals a wand, because he can see no other alternative.

(Their world is a meaningless one. There is only one goal, and that is survival. Survive one more day, survive ‘til tomorrow, survive however you can. Loyalty is only to your gang and yourself; nothing else matters.)

You can't blame Simon Spier, born Caleb de Vil, from abandoning his brother to their mother's grasp. You cannot blame him for not returning to save his brother from his mother's abuse. He watched his father die before his very eyes, watched his father be murdered by one of his mother's employees.

( _Oh_ , you say, _those poor, defenseless children._ You put them there, left them with the worst criminals and abusers in the world. Would you expect anything else to happen?)

These children could have been bright beautiful things like the children brought up here in Auradon, but they didn't grow up like them. They didn't have the luxury. They lived a world where criminals and dictators and murderers were their only role models. There was no way for them to learn right from wrong, save from fairytales told by the least bitter of the villains.

Don't tell me that King Adam and Faery Godmother are any better than the villains they cast onto the Isle. They condemned a generation of kids to abuse, to lives devoid of “Good,” devoid of happiness.

You do not get to send half of a generation of kids to a life of hope and half to a life of desperate survival. You do not get to condemn children on the basis of their parentage and think to be called a hero.

These children survive as they can, as they must. This world has never been kind, so why should they?


End file.
